Supplemental inflatable restraints, or air bags, are commonly secured to a steering wheel of a motor vehicle. When the air bag is deployed in a frontal impact, it helps cushion the resultant forward motion of the driver toward the steering wheel. An air bag module is mounted in its undeployed state to a steering wheel typically with a plurality of fasteners projecting from the steering wheel and/or the air bag module.
Air bag modules often employ fit and finish locating features to guide the module to a mountable position on a vehicle component through a process known as final process positioning. Once properly positioned by the locating features, i.e. placed in final process positioning, the air bag module can be secured to the vehicle support by threaded fasteners, snap-on attachments, or other conventional fasteners. After mounting, the locating features may additionally support the air bag module on the vehicle support.
In order to maintain a perception of overall quality, the position of the air bag module must be controlled precisely to present a centered position on the steering wheel, with even or consistent gaps and/or flushness between the coverings of the air bag and steering wheel. In order to achieve acceptable alignment of assembled parts, conventional production processes require careful attention to dimensional tolerances in manufacturing the components associated with air bag modules and vehicle supports. However, even with meticulous control of the manufacturing and mounting processes, the dimensional tolerances of the assembled components often accumulate so as to cause gaps, uneven mountings, misalignments, or skewed fits between the air bag module and the vehicle support.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved method to prepare an air bag module and vehicle support for final process positioning that consistently aligns an air bag module with a vehicle support, and which reduces the accumulation of dimensional tolerances of the components in the system.